Not What It Seems
by jezebellinhell
Summary: Sam and Dean embark on a ghost hunt only to find out that the ghost they're hunting is not your typical ghost and a female hunter who has been hunting this ghost for years steps in and helps.
1. Prologue

_Hello all who have managed to stumble upon this nice little story of mine. The idea has been floating around in my head for a long long long time now, and I am just now putting the words on paper. Let me know what you think, if you have any ideas or constructive criticism, etc. At this point in time I kind of know where this is going, but I'm not sure how far it's going to go, like if it's going to just be this one episode type deal or if this will turn into a series. I guess it depends on what you guys think, so let me know!_

_**Prologue**_

Leaves crackled under her bare feet. It was autumn, her favorite season, and color filled the forest she was so familiar with. She looked curiously around her, wondering why it was so hard to find Johnny today. They'd been playing hide and seek in these woods since Johnny could walk, and he had never hidden this well before, and she had never had to travel this deep in the woods to find him. It was starting to make her nervous.

"Johnny! Johnny, I give up! Come out!"

Nothing happened. It was eerily quiet. Not even the wind was blowing. She stood there, frightened. Then, behind her, she heard a single twig snap and she spun around as quickly as she could. She took a few steps into a clearing to see what had made the noise, hoping it would be Johnny coming out of his hiding place. On the other side of the clearing, to Jezebel's horror, she saw Johnny lying on the ground, leaning up against a large tree. There were bullet wounds all over Johnny's midsection and blood was slowly oozing from the corners of his mouth. There was no doubt that Johnny was dying, if he wasn't already dead.

Next to Johnny stood a little girl who looked no older than six. She was wearing a white pinafore over a light pink dress, a pink ribbon hold her dark wavy hair out of her small, round face. Her expression showed no sign that she knew of the horror to her right. She let out a little giggle as she said to Jezebel, "Would you play with me?"

Jezebel ran. Not sure of whether or not what she had just seen was real or if she was just stuck in the most horrific nightmare imaginable, Jezebel sprinted home. The farther she got from the sight of her dead brother, the more she heard the little girl's giggles ringing in her ears. Had this really just happened?


	2. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1**_

Sam and Dean pulled into a motel in Ironton, Missouri. The town was old, colonial old. There was one main drag through the little town and on their way in the brothers had passed the old Courthouse and an abandoned hospital, both creepy as hell at first sight. The brothers were excited about this particular hunt because it seemed like your regular haunted town hunt, which they never got to participate in.

"It looks like we're finally going to get a break from those damned demons and demigods and get to deal with a regular run of the mill ghost," Dean said as he opened their motel room.

"It looks that way," Sam agreed.

The two brothers were worn down and sick of wasting demons that they had already dealt with before at some point or another. There was also another issue that was clear in their minds that had become a taboo topic of conversation: Dean's expiration date. It had been eight months since Dean made that deal with a demon that would bring Sam back to life and banish Dean to hell after one more year of life. Sam had spent the first two months obsessed with finding some sort of loophole; some slip of words in the contract that would allow him to keep Dean for as long as he could stay alive naturally, but after a while Sam slowly gave up. There was no loophole and Dean was doing absolutely nothing to help Sam look for one.

"Let's go." Dean stood up and headed for the door.

"Where are we going? We just got here. Don't you want to take a few minutes to rest before we jump into action?" That was the other thing that was beginning to bug Sam. Dean had completely reverted back to his old self; he acted and thought afterwards and he was the most impatient person ever when it came to a hunt. Nothing could stand between Dean and his kill.

"Ghosts don't rest. That's why they're ghosts. As much fun as I'm going to have working a regular ghost case, I'd like to get this son of a bitch out of the way so we can move on to the next demon. Besides, the only reason we took this case is because it's easy and it was on our way to Bobby." And with that, Dean walked out of the motel room and started the car.

Sam unhappily followed suit. "The last sighting was in the woods just behind the old hospital," Sam said as he got into the car.

"To the hospital it is then."

And they were off. Eight hours on the road, five minutes in a hotel room, and they were already working the case. What happened to that break Dean wanted to take not that long ago? Sam didn't need to ask that question. He knew what was going on. Dean knew that he was headed to hell pretty soon and this kill-as-many-demons-as-possible mentality was the direct product of two lines of thought going through Dean's head: a) he wanted to kill as many demons as he possibly could before he lost the chance and b) it took his mind off of his inevitable demise.

When Sam and Dean got out to the hospital, Dean armed himself with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and they trudged into the woods. It wasn't long before they started hearing weird sounds that were muffled by the wind at first, but after a while the muffled sounds turned into shouting and clear gun shots. Before they knew what was going on, images of rifle wielding civil war soldiers running in every direction appeared around Sam and Dean.

"What the hell is going on here? There's no way these are all ghosts," Dean said in disbelief.

"I don't think they are," Sam said as the images slowly faded back out, but one little girl in a light pink dress and white pinafore didn't fade. She looked longingly past Sam and Dean and then her innocent face contorted into an expression of horror. The two quickly spun around just in time to see a soldier on his horse, aiming his rifle point blank right at Sam. Dean shot rock salt at the soldier, but nothing happened. It went right through him as if he wasn't there, and he remained right where he was, unflinching. Just before he fired, a silver knife came flying through the air from behind Sam and Dean, flying right between the two, piercing right through the soldier, landing perfectly stuck into the ground. And with that, the soldier disappeared.

Dean picked up the knife and inspected it. "Where the hell did this come from?" he asked, looking around for a potential source, seeing only the little girl. Knowing that the little girl could not have thrown the blade, Dean was stumped. He turned back to Sam, who was inspecting the ground on which the soldier had just been standing. All of a sudden he heard a thump from behind him and quickly spun around, aiming the shotgun at the first thing he saw.

Crouched down on the ground was a young woman, no older than twenty-six or twenty-seven. She had short, choppy dark hair that covered her face and she wore a flowy dark blue dress. She looked up at them and slowly stood.

"You don't want to shoot me," she said in a calm, collected voice. "It would be inconvenient for both you and me. The best thing for you boys to do right now is to follow me out of these woods before you get yourselves shot."

"And why would we want to follow you? Who are you?" Dean asked insistently.

"I'll explain everything, but here is not the place. It is far more dangerous here than you might think." She started to walk towards Dean, not worried about the shotgun.

"What about the little girl?" Sam asked, not one hundred percent sure at this point whether or not the girl was a ghost or an actual little girl.

"She can do no harm. She doesn't know what's going on. She's doomed to be a spectator for eternity."

The woman walked right between Sam and Dean, got about 30 feet in front of them, turned around, and said, "Are you coming? Or would you rather die in the battlefield?"

The boys decided it best to follow her, but Sam kept her knife, and Dean kept the shotgun aimed at her, still not sure whether or not he could trust her. When they reached the Impala, she stopped and turned to face Dean.

"Would you mind not pointing that thing at me anymore? If I was going to hurt you I would have done it by now," she said as she grabbed the shotgun from Dean and turned to Sam. "And can I please have my knife back?" she asked holding out her hand. Sam gave her the knife and she, in turn, gave Sam the shotgun, saying, "I trust you with it more than I trust him. So you're John Winchester's boys?"

Dean stood there, gaping at this strange woman who had managed to finagle a shotgun out of his hands with no effort, accused him of not being trustworthy with his own weapon, and knew who he was before he told her. What the hell was going on?

"How do you know who we are?" Dean asked when he regained his composure.

"You look like John."

"Would you please be kind enough the tell us who the hell you are and how you know our father?"

"Come with me. We may not be in the woods, but we're still not safe. We're not really safe as long as we're in this town, but my house is about as close to safe as we're going to get." She said as she began walking down the street. Not knowing what else to do, Sam and Dean followed her down the street. Two blocks down they stopped at a small one story colonial home with an old, almost inoperable, Cadillac in the driveway.

When they entered the house, they immediately noticed the piles of stuff lying around everywhere. Notebooks were lying open on every table; the bookcases were completely full with books, both fiction and non; and there were family pictures dating back to what looked like the late 1800s everywhere. She led them to the kitchen, where she put a kettle on the stove.

"Would you like a cup of tea? Or coffee maybe?"

"No thanks, just your name and who you are and how you know our father." Dean replied, trying his hardest to be patient.

She sat down at the table, and Sam and Dean joined her.

"My name is Jezebel. I'm a hunter and I've lived in Ironton my entire life. I met your father a few years back. He was in town investigating the haunting in the hospital. He didn't know about ghosts in the woods at the time. I was already hunting the ghosts in the hospital when he arrived. He saved my ass in there and taught me a lot of what I know today and set me up with some connections to other hunters, including your friend Bobby." Jezebel paused, obviously thinking about the time she had spent with John. She let out a chuckle and said, "He used to rave about you two whenever I saw him. He was like the uncle I never had. But then he disappeared one day. He stopped visiting, stopped calling me, stopped setting me up with jobs. I never heard from him again. The next thing I heard of him was when Bobby told me of his passing." She paused again. Obviously she'd had some sort of strong connection with John, because she seemed pretty broken up about his passing. "Anyways," she continued, "what you witnessed in those woods is a haunting, but I guess you've already figured that out. I've been trying to put those ghosts to rest for ten years, but they aren't ordinary ghosts. They weren't buried; they were all burned in the battlefield. At least the ones that are still haunting those woods were. They've been following my family for years, killing us off one by one. I'm the only one left."

Jezebel was interrupted when the kettle whistled that it was ready.


End file.
